@Galindus
I very much appriciate your feedback, thanks!

After finishing the basic feature set in my other mod ill have a look at adding options for customization of the elements (mostly calculation-multiplier which all the numbers are based on).

What realy helps bringing down cities is siege, sieged city get WAY LESS health back, in late game you will not be able to bring down a city without it beeing sieged. This also makes it an requirement to assasinate Victor if he sits in the last city of an AI ;)

As i thought a bit more about it i think ill implmenet a small change until the option-feature is ready, the siege-heal-supressing will be era dependent also, so i can implement a small degree of "it gets harder" but not too much, beeing able to keep it brutal without siege.

Would love to hear you feedback after its implemented.

@Fampat -- I went and looked at some of the code this morning and the percentages being used for restoring wall strength and health.

I might make some tweaks by era to some of the amounts (I think the restoration amounts once you get into modern are just a little too high). I'm playing now in the future era on immortal difficulty with the Zulus attacking from the south and the Aztecs attacking from the east. It is just a meat grinder with both of them -- on every turn, the Zulus are sending anywhere from 3 to 5 full rocket artillery armies for me to slaughter with a 2 shot Victor and self propelled artillery armies sitting in the cities and encampment districts. I'm also pounding one of their cities from afar, but it is virtually doing nothing to impact health and strength due to such a high automatic recovery (and then natural end of turn healing).

I have several ideas around making this even more powerful and balanced at the same time. I absolutely love the idea of giving gold and units as part of the combat with the human player -- I think the gift units need to be more melee units than ranged units. It might just be me, but gifting ranged units outside of the cities and encampment areas, make these units easy picking by the human player. I'd have to look at your code a little more carefully to see how that is being done. It may also be a limitation due to lack of resources.

I agree with your point on siege -- that is effectively the ONLY way to get a city captured with the mod as is. This is one reason I am thinking of lessening the strength reduction in the modern era and beyond. I might also look at rounding -down- vs. rounding up to see if that helps.

Another idea might be to randomize the recovery -- or randomize within a range. Or randomize by city and adding in some other factors into the recovery percentage (amenities, loyalty, government type, garrisoned unit, governor). A thought here might be to say that recovery would start at 30%, then can increase by 5% if there is sufficient amenities, 5% if more than 50% loyal, 5% if in an opposing government from attacker, 5% if a different religion from attacker, 5% if a garrisoned unit exists, 5% if a governor exists) -- to a maximum of 60%. Then maybe do a +/- 20% range on it (so each turn it could be as little as 40%, and as much as 80%). This may be just too much.

Just a thought.

Until the DLL is released, this will be an absolute must have mod for me. Thank you for your great work.

@Galindus
Looks like you have a lot more play-time in the late eras than me :)
I am very thankful for your feedback, your ideas are wonderful i must admit.

What would be concrete changes you would want to try?

@Fampat -- I started a new game with the new updated siege modifiers.

(note, the Gold, units, promotions, etc., I think are absolutely balanced for my style of play)

With the new siege modifiers, it absolutely requires a city under siege or it is virtually impossible to take the city after the Modern era. (unless you have a decided tech advantage) I'm really torn by this as I think the 75% recovery of the outer defenses is just a bit too much.

I am thinking about changing the following values --

In the eras beyond Modern --

Garrison Modifier -- .55
Outer Defense Modifier -- .60
District Seiged Modifier -- .35

So, it basically is almost the same as Modern -- EXCEPT, if sieged, it will fall slightly faster.

I'll test this out and report back to you. Minor tweaks, but in the grand scheme of combat in the post modern era -- may be big changes.

Also, I have a save in the future era where I can test these changes out directly.

@Galindus
Ive took some more amendments in the direction you suggested, i feel good with that, would love to hear from you, update should be coming this week if everything goes well :)

@Fampat

Looking forward to your update. I just completed a game where I had limited military activities -- 2 wars where I was mostly defending a critical city-state ally, and one where I was able to take a city before calling a cease fire. I also had kept all of the Garrison Modifiers and District Sieged Modifiers the same as in the latest version of your mod, and just lowered the Outer defense modifiers slightly (from .6 to .4 in the last era).

Observations:

1. The Right balance for the outer defense modifiers is likely halfway between what you had and .4. It was slightly -too easy- to take a city. Keep in mind that I also had a joint war partner that was also hitting the city too -- however, once I brought up bombers, the damage was too great. You are right, having a CPU player join a war with you helps tremendously.

2. I'm torn on which type of additional unit should be provided to the CPU (the "free units"). Obviously, GDR is appropriate in the future era, however, before then, I am torn between ranged o melee units being the additional unit. In a previous game (not the one mentioned above), when the CPU was gifted well promoted siege cannons, it made life a living hell for me. If I knew the CPU would use them when turtled up in their cities, I would suggest moving to all ranged vs. melee units.

A suggested request -- if you could do this -- would be to -randomize- across 2 or 3 units so that by era, it is random as to whether it would be a melee, ranged, or other.

3. I do think this is a must have mod. Playing with this, smoother difficulty, and Real Strategy, has made this game very fun. So much so that I haven't won on immortal yet (I used to beat Diety easily before). I've lost 3 consequtive games, the latest one to Canada via. a Culture victory, one where I was beaten by 7 turns on a science victory, and one where I lost on a time victory by China.

I'm also looking forward to the new patch and any improvements there as well.

@Galindus
Sounds like youre having fun!

Your idea with the "random" unit-type to spawn sounds very good to me, i think i will be something ill add next.

If you have a savegame, you may want to try out the current "dev"-version you can grab here:
https://bitbucket.org/fampat/civ6-mod-fortifai/downloads/

Ill try to publish it today, but if not, you may want to take a try. In case you want to give it a shot you would need to unsubscribe from steam and put the content into a folder inside the Mods-Folder of Civ6, for example: C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization VI\Mods\FortifAI

Thanks again for your valuable feedback!

I've got a couple of saved games that I can try out. Just downloaded and will test.

@Fampat --

I downloaded and tested against a couple of saves. Obviously a bit of a limited series of tests, and unfortunately both of the saves are in the future era.

First test -- against an already (halfway) weakened Tenochtitlan. I had 6 jet bombers along with some mechanized infantry and self-propelled artillery. When new units spawned for the Aztec, they would be GDRs and they appear to continue to purchase rocket artillery.

With land units, the revised settings appear to be suitable, albeit maybe a tad soft. When I brought up the bombers, the city's defenses were destroyed rather quickly.

Counterattacks by the AI were reasonable (with their GDRs and rockets), but the ability to hit targets with bombers without any real fear of counterattack proved to be decisive.

I'm not sure if there is any way to do this, but back to my earlier note about randomized AI unit spawns -- if there is any way when being hit by airpower to either spawn fighters or anti-air of some kind, that might be helpful.

Second test -- brand new declared war against Sweden (from a different save). Only had 2 jet bombers available, and Sweden had fighters in range. Ranged units were largely ineffective until I was able to get near the city and ultimately put it under siege. This was a coastal city where the AI could not easily get reinforcements to the front once I started to gain the upper hand on the ground and win the war in the seas.

Because of the fighters patrolling, my bombers were not very effective longterm. I would get one or two rounds in, and then had to rest them for several rounds. The AI (known issue) did not attack with their fighters, but just having them there effectively made things difficult.

Based on these two tests, I think you can keep or slightly increase (no more than 5%) the recovery settings. It appears that more gold was coming the CPU's way, and I think that is a good thing -- until when you ask for peace and can effectively steal all of it from them! So, for single player, I may have to make a rule to not allow for GPT or Gold to be included in a cease fire.

Very good points, thank you for the testing!
Since a new official patch is coming this week i guess ill wait for a new publish until my mods are compatible.

Ill definitaly want that "exploit"-protection! For the solution the AI will not be able trade away gifted gold in peace deals (its own ofcause).

The anti-air thingy, i will want to look into that too, havent implemented any anti-air solutions yet.

For the publish i will amend the recovery, the other thing will get an dev-branch, ill leave you a message as soon as there is something new, if you dont mind :)